15 stars you forgot played for the Detroit Pistons
By Amaar Burton
8. Christian Laettner
One of the five or 10 greatest college basketball players in history, Christian Laettner had a respectable NBA career. But his glittering college resume created expectations that went higher than “respectable NBA career.”
A forgettable footnote in that pro career was Laettner’s time with the Pistons.
Laettner was the consensus national player of the year at Duke in 1992, the same year the 6’11” big man led the Blue Devils to their second straight national title. When Duke won its first national crown in 1991, Laettner had been named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player.
He was given the honor of being the only college player on the 1992 U.S. Olympic “Dream Team,” earning a gold medal as part of what is still considered the greatest team ever assembled.
The Minnesota Timberwolves chose Laettner with the third overall pick in the 1992 NBA Draft, and while those Wolves teams were mostly terrible, Laettner was pretty good. He averaged 17.1 points and 8.3 rebounds per game in his first three seasons before Minnesota traded him to Atlanta midway through his fourth season.
It was with the Hawks that Laettner earned his lone All-Star nod, averaging 18.1 points and 8.8 rebounds a night in 1996-97 while helping Atlanta advance to the Eastern Conference semifinals.
Laettner was traded to Detroit in 1999 during the lockout season, and helped the Pistons make the playoffs that year in a backup role.
The following season, Laettner started all 82 games for Detroit at center (despite being a natural power forward), averaging 12.2 points and 6.7 rebounds per game. In the Pistons’ first round playoff series, however, Laettner was thoroughly outplayed by Miami’s Alonzo Mourning and Detroit was swept.
Detroit then traded Laettner to the Dallas Mavericks. He went on to play for a couple more teams after that — including reunions with Dream Team teammate Michael Jordan on the Wizards and with former college rival Shaq on the Heat — before retiring in 2005.